This is the heartbroken bride who had her wedding ruined when cops stormed the ceremony to deport her asylum seeker husband-to-be.
The Austrian woman, only identified as 29-year-old Susanne B., was set to marry her 32-year-old boyfriend Langkeba from the West African country of Gambia in a ceremony at the iconic Mirabell Palace in Salzburg.
Susanne said: “It was just awful. The officials watched us take pictures in front of the castle. Five minutes before the wedding, they then picked up my husband and put him in custody.”
Despite repeated pleas from Susanne’s mother and friends the cops refused to wait for the ceremony to end before taking Langkeba away.
Susanne said: “If only they had told us earlier. Then we would not have ordered this grand wedding. I have to pay for it now, and I’m a single earner.”
She thinks that the authorities waited on purpose for the moment of the wedding to strike.
Susanne said: “It was a set up.”
Susanne first met Langkeba in Italy while the nurse and mother-of-two was in the south of the country on holiday.
Susanne said: “He was my holiday love. He came to Salzburg a year ago. He has attended a German course and passed his exams. He took care of my two children so that I could complete my training as a nurse. Now this happens.”
Frans Schefbaumer, the chief of the registry office, was surprised as well, saying that “we have never seen this before in Salzburg”.
The police, however, denied that they purposely ruined the couple’s wedding and said Langkeba had his asylum application declined and received a notice on 1st April to report himself within three days in Vienna.
He did however not report himself, after which the cops came on the fourth day – the day of his wedding – to take him into custody.
The Federal Office of Aliens and Asylum (BFA) – which ordered the police to detain Langkeba – did not want to comment about the peculiar timing of their actions.
Since the right-wing government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz took office on 18th December 2017, Austria has implemented several hardline immigration and asylum policies.
Vice-Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache of the far-right Freedom Party of Austria (FPO), the junior coalition partner of the conservative Austrian People’s Party of Chancellor Kurz, was delighted with the deportation enforcement.
He posted an emoji of an aeroplane taking off on social media and wrote: “Rightly so, also a wedding should not prevent the deportation of an illegal African.”
According to local media Langkeba is now in custody pending his deportation to Italy, saying that the Italian authorities are responsible for him according to the Dublin Regulation which determines that an asylum seeker has to file for asylum in the first EU country they set foot in – which in Langkeba’s case was Italy.
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Story By: Koen Berghuis, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
